Collaboration

Paola Catizone, with visitor participation.

Installation

Performance

For the Peatlands Project exhibition at Castletown House, Paola Catizone facilitated two movement workshops, aimed at exploring the parallels between the human body and the body of the planet. 

Through experiential anatomy, breathwork, movement games, meditation and discussion, Paola supported participants in gaining awareness of the fluid systems in the body in relation to the complex inter-connectedness of all physical systems.There was an emphasis on interconnectedness as the underlying principle in the living world. 

Catizone also built a shadow installation in Castletown House's stables, using lights, found and organic objects and pre-crafted recycled plastic.

She invited members of the public to draw and cut out their images which were then added to the shadow installation in response to the Peatlands project. The workshops and shadow play animated the space and fomented public engagement and discussion.

For IMMAs’ Earth Rising Festival 2023, Catizone developed the two movement workshops to include extra time for the crafting of a performance. Catizone invited five artists to participate in the performance and held a number of online discussions with them in order to give information on the peatlands and on the performance concept.

The discussions also invited participants to contribute their images and ideas. Catizone ‘s work includes relational Art processes, where discussion and co-creation are encouraged. 

With minimal time available for performance practice (which only took place at the end of the two workshops and online) Catizone invited performers to improvise and to bring their area of specialisation to the fore.

,  became a ritual of healing for the Irish Peatlands and it included poetry readings, drawing, chanting, movement and dance. 

Bodyscapes was filmed in full and the resulting video will be screened at the opening of The Peatlands Project at Birr Castle on the 9th of November of 2023.

Castletown House, Celbridge, County Kildare

The Peatlands Project: Castletown House

Copper Tree Gallery, Birr Castle Demesne, Birr, County Offaly

The Peatlands Project: Birr Castle

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland

Earth Rising

The Peatlands Project: Castletown House, Earth Rising & Birr Castle

Bodyscapes

Audiovisual

Thunderous Silence takes its name from a Buddhist notion; the potentiality of all sounds being inherent in apparent silence. Both Thunderous silence and luminous void  refer to an "empty fullness" in Buddhist philosophy.

In this short audio piece, the artists summon nature through its sounds, layering it with human voice and everyday sounds to create a "wave", rising from gentle to culminate in a fierce, thunderous auditory cacophony....and back down to silence.

In the historical setting of Fossanova, this work proposes a dialogue between nature and culture, human and non-human, male and female. 

There is a nod to the figure of Thomas Aquinas, and to his terror of thunder and lightning. The artists suggest that a fear of nature and of the feminine underly much of the western cultural canon, and present us, in this work, with the power and the awe inspiring presence of the physical, natural world.

A series of discussions with Brendan Fox in Dublin stimulated ideas — Catizone used a 14 metres long fluorescent green piece of fabric. She constructed a simple tunic, with a long train, to be used at the Giulianello lake.

Nigel Wood selected a soundtrack for the performance; 30 minutes of music primarily from the traditions of trance Italian music, such as Taranta as well as electronic music and mournful ballads. The sound track was subdivided into: Music for the forest, to be played during the procession-like walk through the beautiful forest before arriving at the lake, and then music for the lake.

Giulianello lake was the setting of a singular filming of 

, by Helios film company from Velletri, where a large number of local people acted as extras in an epic movie that evoked Bosh’s 

, which her grandmother used to read to her, were stirred by this. The performance took place in the rain, on the one and only rainy day in Lazio during July ’23. Despite this, people turned up, and followed as if in a procession. 

Walking through the forest was followed by full immersion in the water. The artist engaged in movements that evoked local old trades and domestic occupation: Fishing, washing clothes in the lake.

The public's response was generous and affectionate, with many reporting that memories of grandparents at work had been evoked.

Giulianello lake was retrieved by a group of citizens a few years ago from private ownership and returned to the people and to nature. It is now a protected natural area with wild boar, birds and water snakes.

The project was, in the words of Brendan Fox, an “artistic homecoming” for me. Driving around the Roman countryside and visiting places I used to frequent with my family as a child was deeply evocative and healing, allowing me to mend a partially lost and fractured relationship with my beloved country of origin, in particular with Rome, my birth city, and its countryside.

That this homecoming was mediated through my art- making and collaborations, personally resonates in many meaningful ways. The work that resulted from this convergence of past and present is documented here.

The performance was a ritual of celebration of place, memory, people and nature.

Lazio, Italy

Sleepertown Art Trail

Sleepertown, Fossanova Abbey and Lago di Giulianello, Lazio, Italy

Thunderous Silence

Course content, Programme design and facilitation

Kerry Co Council first artist in residence

Ecosocial

“Wisdom is the intelligence of the system as a whole” 

The Breaking Cover Collective (BCC), is a group of arts professionals, educators, healers and activists.

Its vision is to activate the power of performance art to communicate the urgency of the ecological crisis and to re-enchant our relations to Earth and the wider community of life. The collective aims to propose participatory performative actions as catalysts for eco-social change.

Central to the ethos of the BCC is the idea that art, and performance art in particular, is uniquely placed to communicate the reality of the ecological emergency.

The BCC is inter- generational, fostering exchange of diverse knowledges and experiences.  It acknowledges the elders, indigenous people of many countries, our ancestors at the frontline of eco-social resistance. A relational and dialogical ethos as well as a favoring of embodied thinking, refusing to focus on intellectual discourse alone, underlies the group’s art processes.

The collective was initiated by artist Paola Catizone with the support of IMMA between 2020-21. Catizone ran some pilot workshops  in 2020 and then designed, coordinated and facilitated Breaking Cover, Art and Ecology Encounters, a six month programme on ecology and performance art at IMMA, which was attended by over 50 people in 2021.The programme title referred to the 2020-21 lockdowns, when humans stepped back and nature seemed to break cover.

At the end of the course, a group of 15 participating artists formed and worked collaboratively to present a two hour performance in the grounds of IMMA, in September of 2021, curated by Catizone.

These were born from the tension in the group between individuality and  inter-connectedness. This tension was part of the group's discussions through the course and found its way into the work.

The heart of the performance was not visible, and even esoteric: Musician/ Sculptor Thomas Duffy made and assembled a drum in the IMMA courtyard during his solo piece. Within the drum each performer wrote their intentions; the spiritual drive behind the making of this work. Thomas' drum called the group to the IMMA courtyard after the solo performances. From there, the group  walked in a slow procession to the formal gardens, holding their intentions in mind, and viewers followed.  A woman reported  later how walking slowly along, to the pace of the drum, had come naturally to her.

In the formal gardens, Catizone and Carmel Ennis (Garden Artist) had set up a large banquet table. They decorated it with herbs, plant die, animal skulls. After a spoken word piece by Deirdre Lane, focussing on the bogland (Mind me, don't mine me), the formal looking event degenerated into chaos; the group toasted and then poured the multicolored drinks onto the table and then served the meal by emptying three wheelbarrows of earth, (kindly supplied by OPW gardener Mary Condron), onto plates, which were soon overfilled and spilled onto the table, to the sound of "More!". They added electrical and plastic waste and this became layered with more earth, which now resembled a landfill, a tomb..Excessive consumption was the theme of the banquet, and some viewers later expressed that feelings of grief and shame had overwhelmed them while watching.

As the once pretty banquet table transformed into a monument to human excess, a keening sound (By Hillary Willians and Catizone), prompted the group's migration towards the meadow. There, XR activist/artist Thomas Morelly, armed with his megaphone (Courtesy of XR Dublin) called out the names of extinct species. The artists fell and rose, dying over and over again, until the last creature, the extinct dodo, was called and everything came to stillness. 

The closing gesture of the event represented hope: Catizone lit a small candle in a lantern and the group  walked back to IMMA's Studio 10, with viewers following. A spontaneous Q&A session took place there.

The BCC  continued to collaborate. They produced and presented  a three day programme of individual and group performances and interventions, at 

Earth Rising, IMMA’s first Ecology and Art Festival

The Breaking Cover Programme and the BCC will be included in an upcoming publication : Artist Led Organisations In Ireland, by Megs Morley

IMMA Outdoors

IMMA Outdoors, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland

Breaking Cover

Over several months in 2015, Paola used contact microphones to amplify the sound of gestural drawing and Robin Sherry Wood responded with his electronic music. This intensive practice resulted in Elements, a collaborative, largely improvisational performance, which relied on some basic movement and sounds parameters.

Elements was first showcased at The Sonic Laboratory, in the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University in Belfast, in 2015, as part of Sherry Wood’s Masters assessment. The event was received with great interest and the opportunity to collaborate again came up at Foundation16, curated by Brendan Fox in Tullamore in 2016. The work activated the exhibition space and was captured by video.

The body of the performer mediates between mark making and sound technology. Emerging from a minimal choreographic starting point, based on simple movement parameters, an improvised exploration develops. The span of the artists’ body determines the shape and scale of the drawing, while her movements and the contact of the graphite with the paper are made audible through the microphones.

This work examines an engagement with listening as experienced by both artists and the audience, it invites both embodiment and sound making into the realm of the visual. A dialogue based on rhythm and sound unfolds between the collaborating artists as they perform.

F16, Tullamore, Offaly, Ireland

Culture Night

Culture Night, F16, Tullamore, Offaly, Ireland

Elements

Kevin (Dancing in heaven, entertaining angels)

Dance

In 2007, Catizone was working at Arklink, an arts project for children run by The Ark at Fatima Mansions, in Dublin. Her close friend, Maeve Halpin, was at the time the director of Care Local, an organisation caring for elderly people living alone in Dublin. 

Paola spoke to dancer friends, both hers and her children, and to one of Maeve’s friends, an elderly man who attended dance classes in Rathmines church. She planned and organised a number of local venues and invited a number of people to participate in the making of this video. She then invited videographer Jimmy Reynolds to film the encounters.

The video was shot in a variety of locations, including the old Fatima Mansions, The Oblates in Inchicore, and Maeve’s house in Rathmines. Reynolds contributed the breakdancing section, filmed in a community centre in South Dublin.

The video was shown at an exhibition in the then Juice restaurant, and the proceeds of sales went to Care Local. It was later also shown at Mudra, Catizone’s solo exhibition at the Italian Cultural institute in Dublin in 2008.

The aim of this work is to convey the healing and connecting power of movement and dance, one of humanity’s earliest forms of celebration, communication and expression. Dance can be embraced at any age, and dancing  doesn’t require special skills or virtuosity, just a sense of being alive, in the body in the present moment. To dance is to be human.

Paola Catizone

Collaboration

Bodyscapes, 2023

The Peatlands Project: Castletown House, Earth Rising & Birr Castle

Thunderous Silence, 2023

Sleepertown, Fossanova Abbey and Lago di Giulianello, Lazio, Italy

Breaking Cover, 2021

IMMA Outdoors, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland

Elements, 2016

Culture Night, F16, Tullamore, Offaly, Ireland

About dancing and Growing Old Gracefully, 2007

Juice Restaurant, Dublin, Ireland